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Abstract
In this paper we use the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) scheme in order to analyze tourist satisfaction in a holiday destination. Arising from service and tourism marketing literatures, the study selects a set of components of the tourism experience that are willing to affect satisfaction. The IPA scheme is applied though a survey conducted on a sample of 1.936 national and international tourists intercepted at the end of their journey in the region of Campania (Italy). Although the IPA scheme has been used in past research in the tourism field, only a few studies have applied this tool from a destination perspective. Based on the results, the paper concludes with discussion of implications for both practitioners and academics.
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Keywords: Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA), tourist satisfaction, destination management, Italy.
Introduction
There is growing evidence that customer satisfaction is a driving force behind firm's business competitiveness and performance (Parasuraman et al., 1985, 1988; Zeithaml et al., 1996). This is also true in the case of tourism, where there is a wide application of concepts, models and tools aimed to evaluate customer satisfaction. It is recognized that in order to identify the strengths and the weaknesses of a tourist destination and to improve its competitiveness, it is essential to "listen to the customer". Satisfaction is commonly considered as the best indicator of the state of health of tourism, since it is directly connected to expected loyalty (Del Bosque and San Martin, 2008; De Nisco et al., 2012) and, therefore, is a source of competitive advantage.
This paper adopts a service marketing perspective for the measurement of tourist satisfaction and it proposes the ImportancePerformance Analysis (IPA) as a tool for evaluating satisfaction towards a holiday destination. Although the use of IPA as an instrument for the measurement of quality perceptions is well documented in both marketing (Ennew et al., 1993; Slack, 1994; Matzler et al., 2003) and tourism literatures (Duke and Persia, 1996; Zhang and Chow, 2008; Wilkins, 2010; Söresson and von Friedrichs, 2013), it seems that there still remain some gap that call for further research in this field. Namely, most of the studies that have employed the IPA scheme in the tourism sector focus on specific tourism...